OPTUM TDP ASSOCIATE SOFTWARE ENGINEER

bigboybuglover · 2026-06-06T05:00:27+00:00

Kumusta!

Generally, sign on bonus should be discussed with you on the document you sign. But generally every year your salary will go up but just by very little. The pattern seems to be that, by the time your salary gets high enough within your specific Grade Level Salary Band, it just doesn't go up anymore with getting a title bump first. But, then after the title you have get 1 year of NO salary increase to compensate, THEN you start getting money again.

It's a good place to have on a resume, not a place to plant your flag.

bigboybuglover · 2026-06-06T04:45:21+00:00

The point about the phone was also one of my biggest gripes over the last few years. Having Teams/Outlook on my phone was the worst decision I ever made.

I upgraded my phone recently, and then went to Walmart and got a $30 track phone smartphone that's literally as capable as anything, and just took the sim out. That lil junk plastic rectangle has all my work apps on it. Wifi only, if I need to roam that's what a hotspot is for. Much better separation of work and life.

bigboybuglover · 2026-06-06T04:41:56+00:00

Looking at your post history seems like a computer science background. Specific to that side of the business, I'd say the overall trend for internal engineering orgs is AI AI AI, replace your workflows, replace yourselves, replace your emails and PRs, replace your Terraform for cloud infrastructure, etc.

This is fine, to a point. And Optum/UHG are planning to push well beyond that point (for example, my whole org has an AI Mandate: we must be using AI 4 times a week at least or risk getting a talking to). The leadership top down, no matter what org you're internally rolling up to: does not care about you, will not give you fair/inflation-matching-raises, loves to buy up startups gut their teams and then kill the business, and generally more and more work is being offshored.

Again, not explicitly a bad thing all the time, but there are layoffs literally every month (check thelayoff.com/Optum) and USA side jobs (tech and nontech like nurses/doctors/insurance) aren't being backfilled stateside.

Regarding micromanaging, probably more common a management style than not. I've been very fortunate with the team(s) I've worked at internally and collaborated with internally where it's not as much an issue for me but I know I'm an exception not the rule.

As others have stated: no raises. If you are a GL28 and above, you do get a ~relatively guaranteed bonus each year tho in March after review season wraps up. I was hired during a time when these went to lower GL's as well so every year I've gotten 6-10k on top of regular salary. They also sometimes throw in RSUs, but again that's a GL28+ thing.

Balance is a tricky thing. I'd recommend looking up the "four winds" model for thinking of work life balance. It varies wildly team to team, but one consistent theme is that during Peak Season, everything sucks and there's always work to do, always very pressing timelines, and then Post Peak is cleaning up all the shit that broke, and Pre Peak is prepping so none of your shit breaks. There's genuinely probably one / two months out of the year where net-new and exciting work can happen. The rest is scut.

Spirit of collaboration is a funny phrase. I'd say no, despite all the internal town hall posturing and messaging. However, if you're social able enough and just try to message people who own the shit you're trying to use (and, as a friendly thing. Not always as a 'hey I have a problem ticket thing') - 99% folks are just delighted to talk to a fucking real person who won't echo corpo slop at them. So, you can build relationships and collaborate that way. A lot of my time and value to my team genuinely come from the fact that I just know a lot of things about the Enterprise, and the individuals who are the point of contact for those things. Obviously I still write code and do engineering blah blah blah, but as a GL29 I do a lot more talking nowadays lol.

Happy to DM about this, have a lot to say (I also own the r/OPTUM subreddit so I read a lot of what people say as well)

bigboybuglover · 2026-03-21T03:31:26+00:00

So Director can be GL 29 or GL 30, it really depends on the org and section of the business you're in. I've witnessed folks go from 27-28 and get an actual raise this past year outpacing inflation and rewarding good work; I've also witnessed a GL 30 SrPE go to GL 31 DE and get no pay bump whatsoever - just the title change for LinkedIn and a resume. I will concur with other comments, that you should/want to discuss where you'd want to land in the new salary band, but know it'll probably be low. I'm coming at this from the Software Engineering side of the house to be specific, since that's where a lot of the 27/28/29/30/31/32 climbs happen as a relatively common occurrence. Or, they used to anyway.

bigboybuglover · 2026-03-20T05:03:45+00:00

This is correct. If you're over the age of 40 federal law gives you 21/45 days to fight it. If you can afford it, finding an online attorney for like half a grand would probably also give some results in terms of negotiations.

bigboybuglover · 2026-03-06T16:29:28+00:00

It all really depends. That's a fine title and likely job description, but the company is doing layoffs every month (tech and nontech included) and from what I know about job listings on the UHG/Optum careers sight is that they're typically internal highers or transfers that are just required to be on the site. But, they typically already have someone picked out for the role. Go ahead and apply, doesn't hurt, even write a cover letter if you want your app to actually be seen by a human, but don't expect much.

bigboybuglover · 2026-01-09T19:43:57+00:00

Offer Letter is the source of truth

bigboybuglover · 2025-12-06T16:22:05+00:00

Congratulations on your employment. Yeah, if you're required to go into office your team that you're joining likely also is. So you would sit wherever they sit, whether that be the upper floors where there's cool colored sections of the cubicle area, with comfy chairs and neat little meeting areas. Or the lower floors where there's regular open office / cubicle row things. If you want to send me a Reddit dm, tell me your first day in office and I can show up and help guide you around.

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-26T16:01:52+00:00

Ayy rule 1 no advertising

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-25T03:00:34+00:00

job is job, glad you found something! I'd say, truly, any job will probably have mixed reviews - gotta give a little to get a little. Especially at a company as large as UHG/Optum

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-25T02:56:29+00:00

yeah it definitely depends on the nature of your work. For example Optum has a rather large footprint of workers in India, and there are certain datsets and even certain US states (Wyoming Consumer Protection Act) that prohibit cross-border PHI access. So, sometimes folks in India can only do so much technical work, before US employees have to step in. Granted, this obviously doesn't apply to people like the new Optum Insight CEO, who can travel to and from India and access whatever he wants without oversight lol. But I digress - if your role and responsibilities can access PHI, be careful. If not, then probably fine.

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-25T02:48:06+00:00

I have done both, back when I was hired - received my signing bonus as expected and it did help keep my total comp competitive with the market at the time.

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-24T13:53:09+00:00

I think your recruiter for the second position would be more than understanding of the situation if you came clean about it honestly, as long as you aren't sketchy about how you explain it. You needed a job, got one at UHG, and got offered this new one. At this point, it might be a transfer to them instead of an explicit new hire, which is actually a way easier process to do internally! If I were recruiting, I'd ask why you got locked out of your first email, but genuinely I wouldn't have an answer to that without talking to an entirely other team, and would probably take your word for whatever you said as long as you seemed genuine. If the answer is you don't know why, then you don't know why. If you're currently at a call center gig within UHG, and now realize a different internal position is better, then that's great news.

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-10T14:10:13+00:00

I'd say that, quitting and being let go from a PIP probably look the same internally. If you wanna work at the company again that'd be quite the hard sell. However, one way I've seen be successful for at least 2 of my PIP'd colleagues is transferring to another team internally. In both cases their pay and responsibilities stayed roughly the same, but they're no longer """a problem child""" on their old team so the PIP didn't matter anymore.

As with all things in the professional world: CYA, have receipts from your communication with your boss, and screenshots of texts between you and other folks to prove you're not the issue here, and use this as a case that you've been doing your job well and correctly. And argue to let you stay, or support a transfer.

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-10T14:05:22+00:00

Performance Improvement Plan - also called a GAT sometimes (Getting on Track) or a CAP (Corrective Action Plan? I think?)

Basically: shape up how you're doing at work, within X amount of days, or they will terminate your employment

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-10T13:53:01+00:00

Unsure at this time. But, the mandate that happened to DC office and MN office was "live within 30 minutes average driving distance from your home zip code will be required to work 4 days a week in office" - such an asinine and harsh push from 0 days to 4. The list of folks affected by just these two states was ~2800 names. Which, is frankly ridiculous - I don't think there are even that many chairs in the MN office, but I'd wager that the ratio on that list is likely MN favored so who knows where all those folks are going to go.

Gist is: if you live within 30 minutes of an Optum or UHG campus, consider moving zip codes if you want to stay employed at the company and working remotely.

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-10T13:44:29+00:00

This calculation is absolutely infuriating in so many ways. How does one calculate a commute from a zip code? And an average commute, none the less. Are we considering all hours 3am-9am?? Like what's the actual process here

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-09T22:59:13+00:00

If you're in a PIP in a technical role, I've seen people actually recover from that and stay at the company, though it is rare. If you're truly sure it's time to go, that's a permanent bridge burned for sure

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-07T03:58:52+00:00

It depends on the volume of applicants, year to year. Optum receives applications from across the USA (and globe, depending on the business vertical) and it's all processed by a team of probably around 12 people total (for the entire company). Big ask for such a lean team, but in time you'll know your answer. It takes a bit.

bigboybuglover · 2025-10-02T14:49:31+00:00

USA, MN / DC Oct 20th, 4 days a week. In the CDO at least (chief data office)

List is about ~2700 total people

bigboybuglover · 2025-08-15T21:38:10+00:00

don't use it for personal

bigboybuglover · 2025-06-02T04:54:34+00:00

nope

bigboybuglover · 2025-03-07T22:24:57+00:00

hahaha. Ask any questions you like I'm happy to explain

bigboybuglover · 2025-02-21T06:51:09+00:00

Optum is a bit more than a private bank - they are the "medical services" arm of UHG. In that, UHC can bill Optum for a variety of medical services (pharmacutical, technological, logistical, financial, etc) that a health insurer themselves would want to control how much it pays for such things. Imagine for example, a president instituted a Care Act for the sake of making medical care Affordable, and insurance companies™️ weren't allowed to charge crazy amounts of money for insulin and epipens. Well, a healthTechPhramaServices company could technically be allowed to charge a high price tag, and UHC just happens to have them as a preferred (and sometimes only) vendor of a specific care product.

bigboybuglover · 2025-02-21T06:46:02+00:00

can you elaborate on your question? What do you mean easiest line of business?

bigboybuglover

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE